John Pfaff
Professor at Fordham Law. Prisons and criminal justice quant. I'm not contrarian, the data are. Author of Locked In. New stuff at johnfpfaff.com.
- Resettling white Afrikaners as refugees is the sort of metaphor for "we are a really racist government" that most editors would remove from a dystopian novel for being way way too ham-fisted. Props to the Episcopal Church for using its religious freedom to call out this disgusting act.
- BREAKING: The Episcopal Church has announced it will end its decades-old partnership with the government to resettle refugees, citing moral opposition to resettling white Afrikaners from South Africa who have been classified as refugees by the Trump admin. religionnews.com/2025/05/12/e...
- This is wild. Where by “wild” I mean “the sort of humiliating display of racist arrogance that will harm the US’s world-wide reputation in ways that will be impossible to fully repair in my lifetime.”
- These sorts of deep, enduring human costs are never included in cost-benefit analyses of prisons, unless the crimes are reported and recorded (which guessing rarely are). Also, cost-benefit analyses of prisons fail to account for how these traumatic events may lead to future offending.
- My latest in @baltimorebeat.bsky.social: Thousands of people say they were sexually abused in Maryland's juvenile detention centers as children. Most of these survivors are people of color. Is anyone investigating? baltimorebeat.com/thousands-of...
- A judge allowed the family of a murder victim to create an AI victim impact statement three years after his death and play it at sentencing, where the judge felt that it gave him useful information. Even tho here the AI-statement was asking for compassion, this seems ... REALLY risky.
- Really interesting thread, on the eugenic history of three-strike laws. I remember being surprised when I realized that Hayes of Bordenkircher v Hayes was convicted under a 3-strike law that predated the “tough-on-crime” era, but didn’t think more abt it. There was clearly a lot more abt it.
- Never—NEVER—absolutely N E V E R call these ppl “pro-life” or let their efforts to call themselves that pass unchallenged. This is condemning innocent new-born children to death, and their parents to unfathomable sorrow. And for what?
- As the parent of a child born w a congenital heart defect who was awed daily by what I saw doctors do during ~100 days spent in a NICU, there are not words for blinding searing RAGE I feel seeing this. The is a level of cruelty that transcends “the cruelty is the point.”
- My disappointing in the Spelling Bee is constantly increasing.
